Climate mitigation alone doesn’t address extreme events: Just ask Vermont

There is always some degree of disbelief when a disaster arrives. Walking through the flood wreckage of my hometown of Montpelier, Vt., I felt something closer to confusion. I struggled to reconcile the piles of soaked drywall, molding office furniture and wrecked merchandise — the fingerprints of climate change — with the extensive commitments my community has made in recent (and not recent) years to address the climate crisis and its impacts. 

Like many, I’m left thinking: Even here?

How could a state legislature that only in the past few years prioritized electric vehicle incentives and charging infrastructure, placed clean heating requirements on fossil fuel importers and funded environmental justice programs be the same legislature that now faces flood-soaked constituents statewide and a majority of businesses mere feet away from the Capitol Complex assessing whether damages are too extensive to reopen? 

Vermont, considered by some metrics a climate safe haven, kicked off this spate of climate action with the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2020, which established a legally binding emissions reduction commitment and created the Vermont Climate Council and Climate Action Plan. 

One out of seven of the plan’s goals is to “build and encourage climate adaptation and resilience of Vermont communities and natural systems.” But the legislature and state agencies have also placed emphasis on disaster mitigation. 

In the wake of Hurricane Irene, Vermont updated its Hazard Mitigation Plan and secured a collective $248 million in Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds in part for home buyout programs, rebuilding more resilient bridges and culverts and to reconstruct with their meandering rivers in mind. Whether these measures actually stood up during this flood, which some doubt, we may not fully know until the dust settles. Either way, Vermont faces an increased risk of more frequent and intense flooding due to climate change and appears to be well aware of the threats.

What appeared to be missing from this picture, since the moment flood waters rose, was a sufficient investment in disaster preparedness. FEMA defines disaster preparedness as “a continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating and taking corrective action in an effort to ensure effective coordination during incident response.”

This is perhaps not quite as seductive as meeting emissions targets, but it is nonetheless critical and often overlooked. A full postmortem for this flood will not emerge for weeks or months, but signs of an unprepared community are already there.

For me, it started with navigating a late-stage evacuation with my family. At about 6:30 p.m. on Monday, floodwaters had reached the parking lot, and it felt impossible to find clear evacuation information. Official state and local government social media and websites lacked any easily located guidance. This left them to evacuate at a time when their main escape route was already closed off, forcing them to take a harrowing journey on dirt roads that were literally eroding under their tires. My brother actually had to walk through floodwater just to assess its depth.

Another family member, who relies on daily support from a medical nonprofit, ended up waist-deep in toxic flood water without a single medical guardian having reached out about the flood — either on that day or several days afterward. Another worked all day at a major factory that gave no warning or acknowledgment of the flood to employees. The situation turned catastrophic entirely over the course of their full-day shift. Many of them couldn’t go home.

Government, nonprofits, the private sector and individuals — there is little sense in finger-pointing, because disaster preparedness is the responsibility of the whole community. It is on homeowners to understand and take seriously their climate-adjusted risks, to have flood insurance, to move valuable belongings out of the basement and not build or buy in areas that are vulnerable. 

It is on state and local governments to establish evacuation plans, have an emergency communications strategy that is both timely and able to reach everyone — even the difficult to reach — and invest as much in climate adaptation as mitigation. It is on everyone to take seriously the reality that we cannot rely on what has happened in the past because the climate crisis is happening now. 

Lucia Bragg is policy manager at the National Center for Disaster Management at the Columbia Climate School.